


Sucker's Luck

by ShastaFirecracker



Series: Small Violences [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Emetophobia, Emotional Constipation, Fight Sex, First Time Blow Jobs, Internal Conflict, M/M, Vomiting, all consensual just really angry about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 04:08:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13895913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: They had sex. They didn't talk about it. Six weeks of not talking about it erupts into an inevitable meltdown after what ought to be a standard ghost hunt goes bad.





	Sucker's Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Heyyy so I wrote the sequel. I'm allergic to leaving things on a sour or unhappy ending, I guess? Anyway, they're angry and bad at communication, but the consent is all there. Deep in their constipated idiot souls.
> 
> Semi-graphic vomiting, totally unrelated to the sex stuff.

\---

_does it feel like a trial?  
did you fall for the same empty answers again?_

 

The flavor the week is a haunting in west Texas, two poltergeists working in tandem to oust, maim, or outright murder the entire population of an old, rambling mission-style home that was recently converted to a rental with several apartments. The ghosts, used to terrorizing an individual or one family, have lost their collective shit on the eleven people who now occupy their death space. Dean, Sam, and Cas arrive after a lazy roommate is injured in one apartment and a toddler is killed in the one next door. The child's mother is in the hospital, concussed. The case already feels lost, because smoking the ghosts won't bring the little boy back to life.

Sam and Cas are minding the occupants of two different apartments while Dean is stuck with research. Dean is the one who finds the identities of the spirits, the architect of the home and his twisted bride. There is a keystone in an archway into which the two mixed their blood, to proclaim their undying ownership of the house when it was built. Dean calls Sam with the information while he rushes over from the county hall of records, but he doesn't call Cas. He tells himself that Sam will pass it along. He tells himself that he doesn't have time. He tells himself he has to focus on driving, and on readying his weapons.

He arrives at the old home to a scene of chaos and blood. Another civilian is seriously hurt, and Cas is struggling to hold his own against the dead architect's dead wife. Sam is on top of furniture, crashing a crowbar into the top of every arched doorway. Somehow Dean manages to get a salt round into the dead wife without hitting Cas point-blank, and with three against two the odds finally turn in their favor. Sam breaks the keystone and the rest of the night is a mop-up job. The civilians are terrified and won't be calmed. Sam calls an ambulance, and the three of them ditch the scene to avoid any sticky questions.

It's well after dark. Dean drives. Cas sits silent in the backseat. Sam's knee bounces furiously and his silence is palpable. Outside, distant thunder stutters across the sky, and heat lightning makes the low-bellied clouds flicker the purple-yellow of stale bruises.

\---

Sam slams the door to the motel room immediately after crossing the threshold behind Dean. “What's your fucking problem?” he demands. “What's your problem with _Cas?”_

“Don't have a problem with Cas,” Dean says, cool, and throws his keys onto the table by the bed he's already claimed. He shrugs out of his black suit jacket. One sleeve sticks to the shirt underneath.

“Don't think I haven't noticed,” Sam says, pointing a finger. Dean sees the gesticulating out of the corner of his eye. He focuses on peeling his ectoplasm-soaked clothes apart. “That you avoid him,” Sam and his accusing finger say behind Dean's back. “That you guys've barely talked in six weeks.”

“Don't know if you've met Cas, he's not a chatty guy,” Dean says, and takes his suit jacket to the sink outside the bathroom. He wads it in the sink, closes the drain and starts running hot water.

“You don't communicate, that's what happens.” Sam has gotten closer, and his accusing finger is pointing in the direction of Castiel's motel room. “You don't communicate when it _matters._ It's not like you – it's – unprofessional.”

Dean bristles. He unbuttons his white shirt (half is green and sticky), peels it from his skin, and wads it into the sink, too. Murphy's Law, that's all this evening was. It's happened before, it'll happen again. No one died and no one was seriously hurt. For Sam to call Dean's hunting ability into question over a fairly minor misstep is a low blow.

“Talk to me,” Sam is still saying, but Dean is no longer listening. He's got a cheap motel hand towel and the little soap bar and he's scrubbing ectoplasm off his arm.

“You can have the shower,” Dean says, as soon as Sam pauses for breath.

After a beat of simmering silence, Sam says, “Don't talk to me, talk to him.”

Dean scrubs.

“Goddamn it,” Sam mutters, and turns away.

Dean scrubs.

Sam marches around behind Dean, gathering supplies, then past him, avoiding a body check by the barest margin. They've made a lifelong dance out of being angry with each other in the smallest possible spaces. The bathroom door doesn't slam but it snaps shut with a forcefulness that might have taken a lesser doorknob right off the plywood. The water fires up.

The ectoplasm clings like snail slime. The sink is filling up with hot, greasy water, and the smell is a real entity, a tangible third party in the room. The smell is a little like snail slime, too. Dean scrubs harder, wishing the soap weren't so soft, wishing it was steel wool, and what's in this shit, moisturizer? That won't get the fucking job done. His hands'll just be baby-soft and still covered with snail residue.

He drops the soap and scrapes at the worst of it with his chewed-short fingernails. One of his few memories from before the house fire was Dad putting out a dish of beer on the back stoop to kill the slugs. They swarmed it, drawn to the sweet, musky smell of hot beer in the sun, and they drowned in decadence. Dean, barely four, thought the slug trap was the grossest, and therefore coolest, thing in the history of ever, and he watched their little gray bodies turn from flexible worms to hard pellets as they died. Excited, Dean took the salt shaker off the kitchen counter and shook it generously in the dish. He had heard salt made slugs melt and he wanted to see it in action. It didn't happen immediately; he got bored, went to play with the baby. Hours later, he went back outside and looked into the dish, tipped it up to let the viscous, lumpy, foul contents sluice out over the concrete stoop -

With barely enough time to think, Dean yanks his sopping clothes out of the way and retches into the sink. His wet shirt slips off the counter and onto the floor with a wet splat that makes him heave harder. Acid burns his tongue and sinuses. He hasn't eaten since lunch, except for M&Ms and a Red Bull to push him through the afternoon's research binge, and the smell of vomit, ectoplasm, and hot soapy water brings him to tears in a moment. Viciously, he snatches another hand towel off the rack and scrubs his eyes while he unstoppers the sink and lets the hideous mess drain out of sight.

_What the fuck,_ he thinks. _What the **fuck.**_

The slug incident had never grossed him out. He had been the epitome of a four-year-old boy. Dead slug slop was the highlight of his day. And ectoplasm's never made him think about that shit before. It's no different from grave mud, from spleen juice, from coagulated blood and viscera – no different from any of the hundreds of disgusting substances that come with being a hunter. Honestly, ectoplasm is one of the most preferable of all the dubious liquids Dean has been splattered with.

Dean lets the water run in the sink and stares into the swirl, hoping it's making Sam's shower go cold. He cups up a double handful and rinses his mouth and face, spits, and finally shuts the sink off. Fuck his shirt and jacket. Fuck the cheap carpet his shirt is soaking into. He finally looks at his arm and finds it free of ectoplasm but covered in raised, welted lines where he had scratched. It reminds him of wood chips under his skin and in the back of his throat. _Fuck._

He lets his chin fall to his chest, grimaces, and sucks in a deep breath. Murphy's Law, right? Murphy's Law. Whatever can go wrong, will.

He knew it that night he woke up to Cas touching him. He knew it would break everything.

Dean pushes away from the sink with a curse. He goes over to his stuff to get a shirt, and doesn't find his stuff, because his stuff isn't here, of course it fucking isn't, this is Castiel's goddamn stuff, because Sam had basically exiled Dean to the solo room the last few times they've stayed in motels. Dean acted like he didn't know why, but he knew it was because he was being a dick. He's been being a dick for six weeks and Sam was saving both himself and Cas from the harassment.

Six weeks. A fucking lifetime. Six weeks he hasn't jerked off because he tried and it made him _think things._ Six weeks of acid reflux and lost sleep, late nights wasted to unproductive racing thoughts, mornings he can hardly bring himself to face, and all of it's just been getting worse and worse the longer it goes on.

He wishes he was actually sick, so there'd be an excuse for it. He's thought about making himself actually sick, so there'll be an excuse for it.

Throat thick, he grabs a shirt of Sam's and pulls it on, hating that the shoulder seams hanging halfway to his elbows make him feel small even though he's a grown-ass six-foot man. He picks up Castiel's bag.

Almost as soon as he opens the door, a magnesium bolt slices down the center of the sky and Dean blinks away the jagged blue afterimage as the lightning is chased by thunder like God breaking all the plates in heaven. Storms in west Texas seem bigger than storms everywhere else.

The other room they managed to get is across the parking lot, in the other wing of the building. Dean starts across before he can change his mind. Halfway there, with one last warning flash and crash, the sky opens up. For a minute the rain isn't even rain, it's like someone turned the ocean upside down in the dark sky overhead. Dean doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of escaping the deluge, so he doesn't even change his pace. Half a minute later, he's at the right number and back under the flimsy motel awning. A rip in the awning is cascading water just next to his elbow. He knocks.

The door doesn't open right away. The howling wind has time to gust the rain sideways, splattering in his already-soaked back. He knocks again, harder, and the door is yanked out from under his fist.

"I said I was coming," Cas snaps.

"I didn't hear," Dean grunts, bricking his walls a little higher. The hostility radiating off of Castiel is palpable. Dean steps over the threshold and into the room without invitation, and Cas pushes the door hard behind him so it shuts with a loud clack. "Need my stuff." He lifts Cas' bag a little to show he brought it, and water streams out of a dip in the fabric.

Cas looks at the bag and then at Dean with a sour expression. "It isn't waterproof, you know."

"Rain ain't my fault," Dean says, tossing the bag to the floor. He sees his own bag open on the far bed; Cas is between him and it. And Cas is wearing one of his shirts, he realizes. His hair is wet from a shower, and the sink is filled with gross laundry and hot water just the same as Dean's was. "Taking my stuff?"

Cas doesn't deign to answer, instead grabbing his bag up from where Dean dropped it and carrying it into the bathroom to leak onto tile instead of carpet.

With the way open, Dean takes a few steps towards the other bed and his open bag. He pulls it towards him but his eyes are still on the bathroom door and Cas' back. He's wearing the old gray Led Zep shirt, not some reprint knockoff but a real vintage one that Dean's pretty proud of, actually, and seeing it on Cas does unpleasant things to his head, because he could look at Cas' biceps in soft cotton all day, because he dreams about Cas wearing his clothes, but the falling angel on the front makes Dean unaccountably angry.

Something must show through in Dean's expression, because when Cas turns back and sees the way Dean is looking at him, his face darkens even more and he says, "Are you kidding me?"

"What?"

"I took a shirt, Dean, not your diary."

"Fuck it, I don't care." Dean looks away. "I'm outta here." His fingers tighten on the bag.

"The keystone was in the apartment I was guarding," Cas says.

"Nobody knew that." Dean picks up his bag and moves towards the door, not looking back at Cas.

"No, nobody knew that," Cas agrees, and his tone is cool, reasonable. "But you, and then Sam, knew it was a keystone."

Dean squeezes his eyes shut. "Fuck off, man, it was a mistake."

Cas' footsteps bring him closer to Dean, too close, and Dean only has time to tense up before Cas' hand is on his upper arm, spinning him around. Dean drops the bag, fight or flight kicking in, but he is wholly unprepared for the fist that makes contact with his cheek and nose with piledriver force. Cartoon fireworks go off in Dean's head. Hot copper flows over his upper lip and into his mouth. His face is on fire, all tectonic plates grating and magma heat in between, and an involuntary blur of tears prevents him from entirely making out Castiel's expression.

"Maybe," Cas says, stepping back and yanking the Zeppelin shirt up and off over his wet head, "maybe if I'd started smashing keystones like Sam knew to, you wouldn't have needed to come to my dashing rescue by _fucking shooting me."_ He balls the shirt up in his fists and Dean blinks the blurriness clear, grabbing the bridge of his nose to slow the bleeding. "Maybe I wouldn't be bleeding into your precious possessions." He flings the shirt at Dean, what would have been a decent fastball and makes Dean grateful he didn't have anything more substantial to throw.

Dean starts to say "I didn't," but he looks at Cas' bare torso and realizes, yeah, he did. He'd been hasty in his assessment of how good his shot had been. Rock salt in a shotgun shell... it's got a pretty brutal scatter. The ghost took the bulk of it. Cas took the rest. Over his forearm, where he had been holding the ghost at bay, and the right side of his chest, his skin is a map of angry welts and punctures, red to purpling. Pulling the shirt off had made a few spots smear with blood.

Dean's taken accidental salt rounds before. The pain is no joke. The fact that Cas was so silent about it during the cleanup and the car ride back speaks volumes to the tolerance he has developed since becoming fully human.

"Cas, I'm-"

_"Don't tell me you're sorry!"_ Cas bellows.

Dean's jaw snaps shut. His eyes snap from Cas' body to his face. His fury is tempered with a wildness Dean can't get a bead on. His mouth says rage but his eyes are tear-bright.

Cas' fist clenches again and Dean's got an arm halfway up in a block before both of them still. Cas slowly brings his fist into his other hand and looks away from Dean, over at the window next to the door. The rain on the glass drowns out the buzz of the fluorescent light in the bathroom. Dean lowers his arm but doesn't move away.

"I said I didn't want it if it was only me," Cas says, finally, voice low and rough. "You said it wasn't only me. If you lied, then what does that make it, Dean?"

Dean has no idea what to say. Nausea seeps back into the pit of his gut, oozing around like that dish of beer at the end of the day.

“I said I _didn't want it,”_ Cas grinds out, “if it would be like this.”

Dean swallows down the lump blocking his voice. “What did you want it to be like?”

Cas stares at him. The wildness is still there.

“I wasn't the one who left,” Dean adds.

It's true but it was a mistake to say it. Cas' nostrils flare and his jaw tics. He takes a step towards Dean. Dean squashes the instinct to raise his arm in a block again. Recklessly, he turns his back on Cas, reaching down for his bag with one hand and out for the doorknob with the other.

He isn't as shocked by the impact of Cas slamming him into the door as he was by the punch, but he still reacts in the only way he knows how, which is to try to throw his attacker off. He drops the bag again and swings his elbow back; Cas catches it and hammers his hand against the door, gripping his wrist in a white-knuckled fist. Dean makes as if to twist free, tensing his shoulders, contorting at the waist and letting his knees go into freefall, but Cas pulls his other hand deftly up and around to the valley between Dean's shoulder blades and Dean has to freeze or break his own arm with the torque.

The instant of violent motion freeze frames into this, Castiel pinning Dean face first against the door. Dean gulps deep breaths, pain firing urgent signals from his twisted arm. He knows a dozen immediate ways to get free but he's had long enough for other thoughts to supercede fighting instinct. Primarily he's thinking about the time Cas beat him up in an alley in Sioux Falls for daring to give up on a fight when it mattered most. One of the few times Cas' mouth has been dangerously close to his own, and one of the only times Cas has truly touched him in violence, fully of his own mind and free of outside influence.

_Why did it take this long?_ Dean wonders, focusing on a smear of blood from his nose that has gotten onto the door. He isn't sure if he means the sex or the rematch, a fight just as one-sided this time as it was the first.

Castiel brings Dean's twisted arm back out of the wrestling hold and puts it up against the door to mirror the other side. Castiel pushes against him, pressing his whole body along the length of Dean's, pressing Dean flat against the door. Castiel leans his mouth too close and breathes on the juncture of Dean's neck and shoulder, lips shy of skin by the width of a bad excuse.

Dean licks blood off his lip and says, hoarse, “Come on, Cas. Not like this.”

Cas hisses against his shoulder, slams his wrists against the door one more time and then lets go, backing away from Dean. “If not this, then nothing, that's what you -”

“Cas, I didn't -”

“- mean, it's what you've always meant, and -”

“- I -”

“- I'll leave, I'll just -”

“- _listen,_ you _fuck!”_ Dean manages to grab Cas' arm during the other man's rapid, babbling retreat. He's at Cas' personal space again in two strides and has him against the dresser in a third, slamming the rattly furniture against the wall with the force of his hands driving Cas into something solid to make him stop moving, and the force of his mouth on Cas' to make him _stop._

Cas makes an angry, wild sound into Dean's mouth and grabs Dean's hair with both hands, attacking the kiss like it's another fight he can't afford to lose. Dean's lip splits against a violent clash of teeth but he already tastes like blood so he barely notices, just another bright spot flashing behind his eyelids and in his brain. His hands are on Cas' waist and one of his palms drags over bloody welts from the shotgun blast.

The moment their mouths separate for a quick hit of air, Cas is talking. “If not like this then how,” he demands, hoarse, furious, desperate.

“I don't _know,”_ Dean snaps back, and rocks the dresser against the wall again when he slots his hips between Cas' open legs and grinds them together, bodily dragging Cas into closer contact, fingernails leaving more scratches along Cas' sides. Cas gives a strangled scream into Dean's mouth as he closes the distance again, locking his legs up around Dean's waist and grinding in, in, up and in. His arousal is impossible not to feel. Dean matches him motion for motion, knocking the dresser against the wall until he's sure there's a snowfall of ruined plaster drifting down behind the piece of furniture.

It isn't comfortable - it's barely even pleasant - but it's impossible to stop. Cas' grip in his hair is so tight it feels like he's about to lose a chunk of scalp. He scowls into the kiss, breaking contact, and picks Cas up, arms wrapped under his thighs so far that Dean's fingertips are almost touching the inseams of Cas' sleep pants. Cas bites his neck, not a sexy bite so much as it is an aborted attempt to tear out Dean's jugular, and Dean hisses, swinging around with Cas and dumping him on the closest bed. Teeth scrape way too hard across the stubble on his neck as Cas falls, and when Dean lands on top of him, Cas surges up with a full-body resistance that almost pushes Dean to the floor. Instead, Cas forces his way on top, flipping Dean to his back and squeezing his knees against Dean's hips as he pins Dean with a feral scowl.

“I have loved you,” Cas grinds out, “for a not inconsiderable portion of my infinite existence,” and he digs the nails of one hand into Dean's arm while the other hand goes to Dean's throat, tensing in a chokehold for half a heartbeat before moving down to the collar of his shirt, balling it in a fist, “and there was a time when I may have believed I deserved better, that to love you was a curse, but that time is so long gone, Dean, I can't remember what it felt like, and I am _ruined_ for this life without you.”

“I'm -” Dean begins.

_“Don't,”_ Cas growls, _“say. You're. Sorry.”_

Dean chokes on his next words and Cas lets go of the mangled shirt collar and moves down instead, ripping Dean's belt open. Moisture is streaked down Cas' face and Dean doesn't think it's all sweat, and he doesn't think Cas has even noticed.

“Is this something I can have, Dean?” Cas asks. “If this is the only way I can have it?”

Cas' intensity stirs a cold swirl of fear in the pit of Dean's belly and he asserts his strength enough to push up to one elbow, grabbing one of Cas' wrists and holding it clear of his fly. “I meant it doesn't have to be like _this,”_ Dean says.

Another tear streaks down Cas' face, barely noticable in the sheen of sweat. “I don't understand,” he says, all plaintive despair and empty rage.

Dean pushes til he's sitting up with Cas in his lap and he puts his hands on Cas' face and kisses him.  
It isn't the stuff of romance novels. It doesn't suddenly change everything, or correct any mistakes. It doesn't even work as a substitute for an apology. But what it is, that none of the rest of this has been, is painless. It doesn't hurt, this kiss. Dean's body hurts, and his busted lip and his rapidly blooming shiner, and Castiel's salt rash must hurt, the knocks and bruises of a hard-won fight, but this hard press of lips and teeth and tongue finally, _finally_ isn't just another injury. It has become something else. Something closer to what it should have been to begin with.

Castiel's next inhale catches on a sob but he keeps kissing Dean until he needs to breathe, and after he has taken a breath, he croaks, “I still need to hurt you.”

“I'm -”

“Don't-”

“- sorry.”

“Don't do that.”

“I'm sorry, Cas.”

Cas sucks in a shaky breath. “Don't. Don't. I want to make you come because I've only done it once and I thought I never would again, and I can't do – all of that, too.”

It's Dean's turn to choke on an inhale, but he meets Cas' eyes and reaches for his own half-opened belt to finish the job. Cas lets out his breath in a gust and smashes his mouth to Dean's again, but Dean thinks that he might have heard a barely whispered “thank you” in there somewhere.

Dean gets his belt undone and zipper down while Cas pulls his shirt, Sam's shirt, up his chest. Instead of making Dean raise his arms, Cas just drags the front of the shirt over Dean's head and leaves it taut around the back of his neck. Cas shoves Dean back, demanding access to his neck, which still smarts from the earlier bite, and Cas adds to the pain with another nip, lower, and then another, none of them teasing or gentle, all of them definitely leaving the marks of canines, not suction. Dean groans and grits his teeth, torn between the pain he wishes would stop and the need to let Cas keep doing it, because they both deserve this.

He scratches his hands down Cas' back but Cas shifts out of his reach right before Dean gets his hands on Cas' ass. Cas slides one foot back to the floor, other knee still on the mattress by Dean's hip, and he pushes Dean into a sharper recline and licks his chest and then bites a nipple.

Dean yells, snatching at Cas' hair. “Fucking damn it, Cas,” he complains. “Could you not?”

Cas licks the nipple and bites it again, and this time it feels so fucking good that Dean strangles down another cry.

“What the hell,” Dean says weakly.

Cas hisses against his chest, leaning his face into Dean's flushed skin for a moment of respite, scratching short nails over and around Dean's other nipple. “I lied,” he says. “Last time.”

“What?”

“When I said I didn't know what I wanted to do,” Cas says to Dean's sternum, refusing to look up.

“What?” Dean asks again, stumped.

“I didn't want to get you off with my hand,” Cas mumbles against Dean's skin, and he slides his other leg free of the mattress to fall to his knees by the edge of the bed. There is suddenly very little air in the room and Dean tries to suck in what he can, muscles clenching with Castiel's implication. “After I buried the angel's vessel,” he says, pulling on Dean's pants to open up more access, “all I could smell or taste or feel was grave dirt, so I drank...” He reaches for Dean's underwear and Dean grabs his wrists, stopping him. Cas is tense in his grasp, still refusing to look up and meet Dean's eyes. “I drank until it seemed like a good idea to taste you,” Cas says. “But you wouldn't turn over. You wouldn't look at me.”

Dean licks his lips, still holding Cas' wrists.

“Please,” Cas says, voice smaller now.

Dean takes a shaky breath. “Don't, uh,” and his voice comes out so rough that he stops to clear his throat, “don't get yourself off, okay? I want...”

Finally, finally, Cas looks up and meets his eyes with wide blue ones.

“Yeah, just,” Dean mumbles, letting go of Cas' hands. “Go nuts, I guess.”

For the first time, Dean thinks he sees a flicker of amusement on Cas' face. It's the first positive sign of the evening, and it makes Dean feel better about Cas ducking his head and reaching for the task at hand.

God, that's _Castiel_ down there, flushed with fury and need, not even bothering to pull Dean's boxers down, just reaching into the slit and pulling Dean's dick out; those are _Cas'_ long deft fingers around his length and warm palm on his balls, and it's Cas' lips that part and -

The slick heat of tongue and the fact that _this is happening_ hit Dean simultaneously and he cannot breathe. His hands fly to Castiel's hair, not to push him around, just to hold on for dear life. Dean has denied every indecent thing he's thought about those plush lips for _nine years._ Pornographic fantasies buried so far down they might as well be in the Pit, Netflix and chilling with Satan himself, fantasies so tangled up in Dean's plentiful personal issues that they have taken on the flavor of death and pain and loss and horror, because those are the things that share the greatest proximity in Dean's unplumbed depths. This, this thing with Cas, Dean put it in Bad Stuff Mind Jail so long ago that it feels criminal, what's happening now, it feels like a jail break – and he gave the prisoner the key.

Dean is glad the rain and wind and thunder are here to accompany this thing with an appropriate soundtrack. He isn't sure he could handle this in silence. Castiel's shoulders are tense as a rock wall and his approach is greedy, tongue everywhere, on Dean's balls and back to the head to lick up the embarrassing amounts of precome, small desperate sounds in the back of his throat broken by obscene wet noises when he takes Dean all in.

All of it together - where Dean's head is at, and the view, and the fucking delicious, delirious heat and pleasure and choirs singing hallelujah happening all in all the disparate parts of Dean's body – have his eyes watering with the need to come faster than he can remember since high school, maybe not even then. He doesn't have the time or the mental power to put together a complete sentence. All that's coming out of him are short, sharp pants that sound a little like 'Cas' and 'fuck' but mostly sound like blasphemy. Then the heat contracts into his spine like a fist balling up and it strikes back out just as hard as the right hook Cas caught him with earlier.

He doesn't give warning, there's no way to, and even though Dean's hands twist forcefully into his hair, Cas doesn't seem to expect the sudden flood into his mouth. He chokes on it, swatting one of Dean's hands out of his hair, pulling off, semen spilling down his chin. Cas pulls back, coughing and hacking, swallowing involuntarily to clear his airway. Dean can't help the instinct to grab himself and pull a last few strokes, because the shocks are still stuttering through him, and he ekes out one last rivulet of white that smears across his hand. He lets go quick, gasping out a hoarse “Sorry,” because he likes to at least pretend he's considerate in bed, and Cas is dying here. “Shit, sorry -”

Cas heaves in a breath and pushes up to his feet, knees shaky, and he shoves Dean flat back onto the bed, climbs over him, and kisses Dean fiercely. His mouth is bitter-sour and slick with come, and Dean shudders but takes it, kisses back just as hard. He deserves that. He even sucks Cas' lower lip into his mouth, licking it clean, and Cas' back shivers under his hands.

Fuck, God, he said he'd return the favor, huh? Dean scratches his nails down Cas' sides and pushes at the top of his flimsy cotton drawstring pants, not letting himself think about what he's going to do, because it's already too much and his oversensitized skin is humming, thigh muscles ticking like Baby's hood when he's pushed her hard and her engine needs to cool. He curls his toes up in his boots, holding himself together in little ways.

The sleep pants slip off Castiel's hips easily because of the weight he's lost. Not eating enough, not sleeping enough. Problems with humanity, or problems with Dean? Dean supposes they're the same thing. Cas isn't wearing underwear. Dean can't think about that too hard because the bare skin of Cas' ass is in his hands one layer before he's anticipating it, and an adrenaline jolt at the contact makes his heart stutter and his cock try to jerk to life again. Cas groans into Dean's mouth and breaks the kiss, tipping his face down with something like a grimace. He brings one hand to Dean's shoulder and raises his hips, creating a little extra distance between them.

“Hey,” Dean objects.

“You don't have to,” Cas says, uncomfortably close to reading Dean's mind.

Dean slips one hand down from Cas' hip to his cock. It fits in his fist with disconcerting ease, and Dean thinks distantly of gun grips and knife handles worn comfortable with time and use and familiarity – but this is not something to weaponize. He strokes and realizes that Cas has been holding his breath, because it comes out with a low keen when Dean commits to the action. Castiel drops closer again, face pressed into Dean's shoulder, and Dean brings some precome down from the head of Cas' dick to slick the way and keeps going.

Cas' breathing is rough and unsteady, hips jerking into the motion of Dean's fist. This isn't a great angle, but Dean can't fathom moving. He brings his other hand up to the back of Cas' head but doesn't grab on this time, just cards his fingers through hair still damp from the shower and now sweat as well, an odd gesture of comfort in combination with everything else. It's just that Dean's touch seems to cause Cas as much pain as pleasure, and the tension hasn't left Cas' body all evening. Dean strokes faster, wanting to give Cas the chemical relief of endorphins if nothing else.

Castiel's hips still and his fingers curl against Dean's neck, thumb pressed into Dean's pulse point. Wet heat spurts against Dean's belly and he finds himself murmuring “Yeah come on, let go, it's okay, it's okay,” while Cas muffles the noises trying to escape him by biting Dean's shoulder hard enough to make Dean wince.

A handful of heartbeats pass after it's all over. Both of their harsh breathing is evening out into something approaching normal. The rain drums bored fingers on the window, cosmic indifference to what just happened here. And why should anyone care? Cas is human now. Any enemies Dean considered real threats are dead or imprisoned. Neither of them are on any particular Most Wanted lists, at least for the moment.

Dean realizes awkwardly late that his hand is still on Castiel's dick, which is softening under his touch, and he tries to remove himself from the situation without making anything worse. He has the good grace not to jerk his hand away. He moves his hands to Cas' waist instead, not worrying about the bare skin, not worrying about being naked with his friend because they _just fucked._ Modesty has no place here anymore. Shame has been a bad friend to Dean for too many years.

“I'm sorry I hit you,” Cas tells Dean's shoulder, voice cracked and gone.

“Nah,” Dean says. “Had that coming.” After a moment and another few deep breaths, he says, “I could do with less biting, though.”

And, miraculously, Cas laughs. Dean can't help but echo him.

Dean can feel the moment the tension drains from Cas' back, the moment of letting go. Orgasm didn't do it, but this does, whatever this is, a spate of shared hysteria, folie a deux. Laughter is brief on both their parts but even a few seconds seems to be enough. Cas shifts to the left, unstraddling Dean's thighs, awkwardly kicking his tangled sleep pants off the one leg they were still clinging to. Dean sits up, going to rub at his tired eyes with one hand before he realizes where that hand's been. He strips Sam's abused t-shirt off his shoulders instead and scrubs at his face briefly with it. He'll try to remember to wash it before he lets it get back into Sam's stuff.

Putting pressure on his face reminds him of the punch. He hisses involuntarily, and thinning his lips like that reminds him that he's got a fat one of those, too. He looks over at Cas, who is watching him with a mixture of apprehension, love, and profound regret. Cas' hair looks like it's been through a hurricane, and a few of his scattered salt wounds are sluggishly oozing blood, probably reopened by violent motion and a skyrocketing heart rate. Dean glances down at himself and sees that he's smeared with a good deal of red he hadn't noticed in the thick of things.

“Shit, Cas, I'm so sorry,” Dean says, reaching out to take Cas' wounded arm.

Cas lets him, but his expression shifts to rueful. No more anger or pain there. “Don't be sorry for that. It was a clear shot and in taking it you saved me much worse injury.”

“Could have saved you all of it if I'd-”

“Dean,” Cas interrupts. “I'd rather not. It's all done now. Let it lie.”

Dean forms the counterargument in his brain and his lungs and the sounds make it all the way to his throat before they die. After a moment, he nods.

Cas lets out a brief, humorless laugh. “I hurt,” he says, simply.

Dean makes a face of rueful agreement. “I should clean up.” He looks over to the door; his bag is still where he dropped it. The small rectangle of the window flashes like a camera flare, lightning shining through even a double layer of curtain, and a second later the crash follows. The thunder rolls away for a long time.

“You can have the shower,” Cas says.

Dean turns his head back in Cas' direction but doesn't quite look at him. “It isn't just you,” he says, before he can overthink himself out of saying it.

Cas is quiet for a long moment. Then he says, “All I want is for you to acknowledge that tomorrow. And to kiss you sometimes.” His lips quirk in a mirthless smile. “To kiss you without needing to hit you first.”

Dean lets a smile tug at his own mouth. He touches his cheek pointedly. “I'd prefer that.”

Cas glances up and Dean finally meets his gaze. Dean licks his lips, making the split one sting like a mother. He says, “I'm gonna take a shower.”

Cas nods.

Dean stands up from the bed and it takes a second for his brain to catch up with his thoughtless, rote motions; he realizes he's started pulling his pants up, because instinct is _still_ telling him to be careful around Cas, don't allow an opening, don't tempt things down this road. He blinks and remembers that Cas' come is drying on his stomach. Cas is standing from the bed, too, gingerly poking at his wounds to assess any new damage, and he's naked as a jaybird. Dean tells instinct to go fuck itself. He shoves his pants and boxers off, kicks them towards a corner, and goes over to his bag to find something clean.

He takes a quick shower, rinsing his tender face with handfuls of cupped water because the direct spray hurts too much. His endorphin rush is fading, leaving his body mottled with pains, some small, some worse. His left arm and wrist are throbbing from being twisted behind his back. His knees and spine make it known that, in their opinion, bodily picking up a grown man nearly Dean's size was a bad idea. And one nipple is significantly redder than the other, shading to purple, and Dean has to keep that side turned out of the shower spray.

But despite all that, it's surprisingly easy to look Cas in the face when he steps out of the bathroom, even though Dean has put on his t-shirt and a new pair of shorts while Cas hasn't bothered. Cas is so unselfconscious about his body that, for once, Dean manages to look at him like this and not go to Bad Stuff Mind Jail. Cas is just standing there awkwardly applying the last of a handful of butterfly bandaids to his arm with one hand, the half-empty tube of Neosporin held in his mouth. He finishes, replaces the cap on the antibiotic and neatly repacks his first aid kit before looking up at Dean.

Dean takes the last couple of steps forward and presses his mouth to Castiel's.

Cas' breath smells like toothpaste, thank God. Dean would have kept kissing him anyway, but this is nicer. Dean keeps it gentle, not least because his split lip is really smarting, but also because... this is how it could be.

Cas returns the kiss without hurry or pressure. He puts his hand against Dean's chest and Dean puts a hand on Cas' neck and they let the kiss live its natural, leisurely lifespan, before parting easily, and saying nothing.

Dean squeezes Cas' shoulder once before he moves away towards the closest bed, pulling the covers back and climbing in, one arm tucked comfortably behind his head. His eyelids are already heavy by the time Cas has finished walking around the room, turning off a couple of lamps and making sure his phone is plugged in to charge. Dean remembers that his own phone is in the other room with Sam. He doesn't care.

He doesn't realize his eyes have slid shut until he's jostled briefly awake by the mattress dipping and rocking. Cas leans across him, bare chest brushing Dean's clothed one, to click off the light. Darkness takes the room except for what little flickering creeps around the edges of the curtain; the worst of the storm has moved off, but the rain still pounds a steady rhythm, and every now and then lightning casts searchlights across the sky.

But Dean is hidden here, for once, even from the condemning parts of himself. He knows Cas didn't put any clothes on but he turns to his side and reaches out anyway. Careful of wounds, moving gingerly from all the aches, Cas manages to get close enough. Dean wraps an arm around Cas' middle, mindful to avoid the bandages.

Dean closes his eyes again.

This is how it could be.

\---

The morning breaks clear. The sky is a blank, rain-washed gray; the warming air smells of wet asphalt and the green things that fight for life in the cracks. In the parking lot, Sam does a double take when he sees Dean and Castiel. Dean's shiner is in full bloom and his lip is scabby, and the teeth marks on his neck are visible above his collar. Cas' short sleeved shirt displays the mess of rash, punctures, and bruising that is his arm.

Sam stares for a minute while Dean unconcernedly tosses his and Cas' bags into the trunk. Finally, Sam adds his bag to the pile and pulls the trunk shut. “Find some more ghosts to fight?” he asks, sarcastic.

“Hey,” Dean says easily, “I've seen this great new trend on all the hot blogs, it's called minding your own fucking business.”

Sam snorts and looks over at Cas, who gives him a small half-smile.

“Glad you hashed it all out,” Sam says. “Are we gonna be good now? At least until the next time something crawls up your emotionally constipated ass?”

Dean shoots Sam a death glare but rounds the side of the car to the driver's door. “Yeah.” He glances at Cas. “We're gonna be fine.”


End file.
